education and agriculture and very often we would develop that technology solution but technology fail to have an impact because of capacities for individuals cannot make use of capacity on their own. relented to find out why this was the case in research showed there was a positive impact in the ultimate conclusion technology only amplifies sorry for those human forces

are positive or capable but they're either indifferent or not able to take care of that technology within direct contradiction that people believe the causes the change we're looking for. >> it is a pleasure to welcome you today. a senior researcher hear i work with virtual reality with those technologies the way we perceive the environment with our body

and our experience and how we can change the way we experience the world. it is my great pleasure to introduce our author of "we have the technology" of what other people in the world are doing to enhance our abilities. she is a journalist and teaches at uc-berkeley. here she is. [applause] >> thanks for coming out to sea en to author talk about her new book i need this

lecture just for you. i know people are working in virtual reality. so whenever i give a talk because you were you and how did you report the book? so i am a science reporter teaching a uc-berkeley i took one year off and basically served my way through the states and countries where wanted to go it is a very cheap way to report my goal was to write about those not just those from universities i wanted to see science in the real world.

in robot builders and perfumers an awesome people with the short version of went here and here. and here in here and hear that is marilyn monroe and here in here. indefinite this robot. it is inching computer. because i wanted to understand this is part of the clock with the world's

lowest supercomputer. these are augmented reality tattoos but unfortunately they were temporary. stuff that looks like this and that. and i did that to my laptop. that to my wrist into my couch and then finally this happens there where we meet with the giant head then finally this is happening. i know you haven't had a chance to read the book because it just came out but i will give you a quick overview.

deny you can explore three by five senses and hack them. and there is no one reality. if there is no single one experience of the world from what you perceived is different and would everybody else perceives. there is a huge amount of information without a coherent experience. then to discover the rest. the senses are limited. selachian since electricity.

even birds or sea turtles. in with this bio hacker collective they were frustrated. what can they see the sunset? so they and others were in a bid and i will show you a little bit what they're doing afterwards. and while in extreme of people working to push the boundaries.

so that book is 11 stories i think it'd been like baskin-robbins. but one of the first people on the planet. and then volunteered in the new design his i bet on the bridge of his nose and then stimulates the photoreceptors for when he was a young man. he doesn't see callers are objects it is contrast

points but he can navigate you cannot see organic material. i can see your eyes. but using a reflection of of my glasses. into go into robotic surgery while i had to get so many vaccinations. and they were operating on a patient across the room. because right now they'll get touched feedback the dunno how tightly they pull on the suture and then to

improve those robotic devices. but i realize with the development of narrow prosthetics. and then to render touched. to know how tightly they are gripping the object. >> one of the things that he is prosthetics is to touch their hands.

but the idea is to refrain the a.d. about time without human guardians. with those engineering problems it is unjust gadgets but what we can do to help ourselves. and make that argument wing bridge is a technology. so in the last century and then came this idea of savory over 100 years but not accepted in the west.

in then they learned the taste. so we went on a quest if anybody comes tonight though it perceives the ability for what we taste. about volunteers who you sent using with patients with alzheimer's to grab memories. smell and reverie is connected in the brain. so with virtual reality and wanted to show you what i got to witness to talk a lot

how diversity's technologies can be. so with first experience going to the human interaction lab the first experience was in the simulation it -- pit there was a board you have to walk over it is in immediate experience but you have to react if it is real the media started to do this. he said would be doing with your arms? people scream and run across the board she couldn't do

distressed to real but what happens if i jump off? he said try it. it was amazing and remember thinking it was like going over the cliff with their road runner cartoon. sova wanted to see if virtual reality has changed between 2013 and 2015 to make the experience more realistic what i saw was amazingly real. i had this amazing experience that buckley airforce base in colorado.

they were headed to afghanistan there in a program called strives. the idea to see if they to be more resilient with ptsd by pretreating exposing them to stressful situations. this is run by psychologist part of a group for creative technologies and those who had already deployed so they're called virtual iraq in virtual afghanistan. the ada is a big go into that scenario actually is a

person who buys them than they recall memories. tell me what happened and they say remember gunfire she makes the sound of gunfire. and then she creates a sandstorm and that was mentioned. these are our some of the images from virtual iraq. this is a more stressful checkpoint with a sandstorm the allotted then you're in a vehicle it is a common situation. here is one that is the ambush situation.

in one is actually being hit in the lab he doesn't believe use vision and sound but has subwoofers that vibrates with the shock of the explosion in pomps smell into the room. and has them walk through the simulation to carry a proper rifle. even if he lamp they just cannot figure out taste. so this is mitt to be hyper real and based on exposure therapy.

the idea had been around i it team led by every university they had built their virtual airplanes and elevators people who could stay called in the virtual elevator to get on the real elevator. and by the mid-90s in had ptsd were considered favor the hardest to treat. so there really should try that novel form of therapy between using virtual reality when you are afraid

to be stuck in an elevator when you have been to war would is scary it has already happened. and at a veterans hospital. to have immediate help with those two scenarios and at 1.2 with an off and checked it aside. but that works nobody threw the helmet and everybody got better.

this is my favorite quotation about how powerful this was. soldiers had to deal from the memories. they didn't have tanks somebody said they saw the enemy. somebody said they saw water buffalo. so then to have the digital native and then there was a need to deal with ptsd. showing 11 percent of soldiers returning had ptsd

depending on the bridge of service. treating people after they develop the symptoms is not enough. and the independent learning while you take the test. the idea is called teaching people to cope with stress they will remember how to do that. someone to show you a little bit it is pg-13 for violence and strong language. i'll show you the first couple of minutes.

sari. i am getting the beachball of death. we don't have audio. should i restart? >> it was working when we tested it before. we only have some of the

technology to turn it on. [laughter] but the town's population is predominantly negative. and with the residential district of an increase of the activity. and it is also known as basket. and part of the drivers of the security patrol. as said driver keep it between your home the. you'll be tested telling you can keep the distance.

>> and the others got their act together. >> i have gotten no conscience. >> so you get the idea. with the team leader the adn it is a distract your task from the car in front of you.

solis said the boring desert driving scenario. this is very small but i'll try to scroll to the part of we have to make a decision. >> driver pull over now. >> wiry stopping? somebody in the room. standby.

is he dead? we will see what we have out there. holy mother of god. is he dead? he is alive. sweet jesus. >> so basically what will happen is what you should do in this scenario. should you get help or should you wait? so they argue that a virtual advisor pops up and offers

advice how to get through this situation. it is pretty disturbing video in it was the least disturbing. and with these ethical situations where they're not something bad happens to the matters of conscience. what is the hard core military use and also want to tell you about a different of virtual reality lab which five years after the first time those in the room with the helmet and the attic and that was it. now they had remodeled with precision tracking but it

was the proteus effect from the adl they could shift shape to see how that affects the behavior in real life. those surveyed taller in the virtual world been dating burners that people would exercise more if the average gore was shown exercising and losing weight. it even if they were dressed in skin decoding would rate higher with their "avatar". so there group is interested

what happens what you do in the real world. so they put me in a virtual shower. wash your hand and then i could see up the window the "avatar" standing in front of the plates of coal as a washed my body she would eat it in the kidney and cough it would go on forever then it was excruciating. and then it was and how much hot water you used the you are wasting energy and they did use less than those of a different experience.

then they had a virtual tree and i was on a hilltop surrounded by the canopy of trees all the birds with stops singing. and it's started to fall but then afterwards there would accidentally knocked over a glass of water. . .

then he asks me to get down. i am a coward and a lovely pastor and in front of me is another cow. he explains this as an image of my avatar there because given the physics of wearing a helmet it's hard to look down. an adorable pint-size with the body on thin legs i move around a bit watching. shifting the consciousness to the external representation and that is just what we are doing.

welcome to the pastor voices the boom overhead. before a dual purpose breeds suitable for dairy and beef production. to be told i'm suitable for beef production on a roll with it as they give me instructions. i walked over to the cart and eat. i do my best to position myself over some hay. the voice takes off about how much weight we must gain 3 pounds a day. i wondered whether i should find shooting although no one has requested it. now the voice tells me to walk over to the water trough. we moved to the left. i can see in the real world they wouldn't know what a marker attached to the end. normally he would have jabbed me with that lately and i would have seen it coming at me while i felt pressing to my site. this side. this was a synchronous touch him

he explains, which is another way to produce body transfer. today i stand over the water trough as they tell me i need to drink up to 30 gallons a day. turned to the left until you see where you started. you have been here for 200 days so it is time for you to go. i wasn't expecting this. it hit me with the word slaughterhouse and the feeling of being trapped in the guilt and responsibility that i feel come i somehow feel it is me but i simultaneously feel younger and more innocent and i should point out a vegetarian. it's remarkably heavy for having been in this virtual life only a few minutes. the part of me walks the defense and the part of me that is a person is yelling. it's startling even me. this is a brutal i shout at shock at no one in particular. they tell me to face my cow avatar. she looks back at me.

here you will await the truck. i feel a rush of fear as the world shakes her company. i move my head from side to side wondering where the truck is going to appear it. what will happen then but it doesn't. the experiment is over. i hear myself uttering. after that experiment the lab went on to things even more unlike the human body. they cite you can be sympathetic to the cow so the next body they put me in was the idea of assimilation that you are in an ocean that is being warmed by carbon. we would have to watch ourselves and these are very intense. so they gave me one that was

very sweet and i wanted to leave you on this note although i can also show you the biohazard if you want. but i wanted to leave you on this note because i thought that it was really the moment i think it clicked for me about how immersive these environments can be varied so before i leave the put me through another demo to illustrate the increasing world how easy it is to adapt the dream. there is no experiment can adjust a backyard of the village. the terra-cotta walls with stunning a tale rendered in painstaking variety. the fire in the heart pops out and the trees sway in the wind carrying out drafts with enormous blue butterflies. i'm struck by how comfortable it is to be here to appear through windows and walk through open doors i expect the world to unfold endlessly in front of me. i start looking for the simulation to find that this isn't a real place and it's

perhaps too pretty. it is extreme elasticity gives it a theme park quality. the bright colors reminiscent of plywood and paint i find myself wishing they had rendered a parking garage for something with with that with the dingy mist of ordinary life and then there that there is a tug on the back of my head to prevent me from walking into the real world walls as they move through the landscape. but mostly i think about what it would be like to roam in the adventure or to watch the dramatic story unfold or just rest. i drove down on all fours to here down looking at the will pixelate up up close pics later posts boiling the ocean but they don't. i move over to the fountain and gaze into the water that is rippling in the afternoon breeze and this is when the world often hits the. i have no reflection. sometimes the moment proves how tightly it is bound to you because while i am intermediating how much the water looks at real water this is how things look patiently

holding my tether in the dark. i am so caught up in a dream that i'm on my knees arms outstretched bucking for myself and the fountain to defend their. so that's it if he wants to see. okay this is the gross part i'm just going to warn you. so i told you he we went on a search and able to start implanting the magnet is. people swear that they can get some sensation through this question is what is it. is it true or is it something to do with the fact that it's actually in their hands into touching. so that's the last chapter. but i will introduce you.

he is the founder. when i got there, they had just implanted him with a device. this is encased in silicon. in real life about the size of a deck of cards. this i should say they don't do it them selves in the basement. this is what they can do. so here he's holding the charging quayle up to it and you will see a blink three link three times to show that it's receiving the charge. >> i don't go if you could hear that very well but it was

somebody singing jingle bells comes to veto. so what he did is talk the temperature and relayed that information to the cell phone. they had plans to to do to put that in for about six months and they took it out after three because it was expanding due to the heat of the charging quayle and they thought they would get out of this first kind of a test, some kind of a proof of concept to see if they would develop and infection and if there would be another problem that they would breach. but none of that happened is that he had just started building a device that they called the northstar and this is what it looked like. the idea was to develop a compass that would go in the back of their hand and it would light up when you face north to the kind be kind of like a de facto. so that's what it looked like a november of 2013. this is the first manufacturing model you can see it's about the

size of a quarter. the following images are all a part of the team members. this is the final and printed version. they put it in just before thanksgiving. this does not have a working compass. they called us the light version of any kind of proof of concept. you can see they are working on it. it's coming along. so, that's it. i would be happy to take questions if you have any. thank you for being such a fantastic audience. plus the >> what was the most surprising thing when you researched the book? >> this was a book of many surprises. basically i was like what are all of the cool things i can go see. if you are definitely very

surprising. the fact that they've gotten that far and they haven't died yet. it's really surprising to read the big thing i did not know that was amazed to know was a alzheimer's. i didn't know that it was the first clinical symptom of alzheimer's also one of the first symptoms of parkinson's disease and it has to do with the fact that the old factory center of the brain is ancient and very old and the centers for memory and emotion kind of develop around it. it's very, very primitive and the idea that you could give somebody to send and have them recover memory, these sweet ladies that a that even if that works with cosmetics hospitals are doing a hack. it's not a tour for alzheimer's but it's a cut around sometimes and i had no idea that existed before i started. any other questions?

>> when we are talking about a thought of these experiments and feeling somebody now it seems to wonder if you can comment on how the virtual reality experimentation of the politics in forming opinions -- >> that's interesting. so, the lab at stanford, very clearly they say we are trying to do things prosocial. they are very clear about this. we want to do things that help the common good, which is why they have all these things about the environment and about helping other people. to help the mothers of test

whether you he basically fly out of the >> a superhero if you later will be more inclined to help people and if they render you colorblind if it would make you more sympathetic to people who are colorblind, so they are doing it for these social purposes. that said, there are terrifying potential abuses of this. there is a very heavy moral teambuilding message in this stuff. i don't know if i am particularly susceptible but when i went into that i thought i was in them and i felt an emotional connection very quickly. i don't believe that is the same for everybody but to me it felt very real. maybe i was primed to make it feel real because i was studying the stuff so much and i was there to have an experience. but one one of the big concerns people raised was what happens when we don't realize it's not real, what happens when there is more blurring between the virtual and the real, particularly what happens when

they are feeding information into your not aware of the choices that the programmers made about what information you're going to get. so, what information does the algorithms are few and what is left out, what happens when we are letting a lot of our behavior be steered by virtual networks that other people who are thumbs-up and thumbs down through the activity in our and are kind of like this force of the crowd controlling your actions. i think those are very good things to think about. i don't have answers. i kind of feel like people say technology is a tool you can use and i always feel like a reporter i go to observe and not really to make any final judgment. but what i felt was powerful. that's kind of what i took away from its. >> isn't clear if it's there and if we can identify whether it's

not clear going to create a? to great question. so the idea are we going to create it. it isn't going to change and people in japan who could send him money to veto -- there's isn't any different than anyone else. it is a perceptual change command i've read in the text of the tool is language. having the word for something as allows you to experience because you can conceptualize an essay i recognize that thing. i have a memory of the thing. i can convey my experience is that two other people. and so, one of the big debates is going on that is going on in the world is wow, because we don't have a word for whatever it is, maybe we just missed it. it may or that we don't notice it. the big comparison with the use is the problem of inventing or finding another color. this happens the second overtime

with visual researchers. one of the big comparisons people say is in some languages there are not separate words for flu and green. it doesn't mean that people who have been raised with one of those linkages can see blue and green it means they perceive them as a singular experience and people who have developed and grew up with a language that distinguishes between them see them as two separate things. so maybe it's the same taste. maybe that fixed taste is adjacent similar to another but we can't pick it out because we don't have a word for it is we can't compartmentalize in our mind and of the people say this is bogus. if it was there, if it was universal languages that have built a word for it. every language has a word for sweet or salty or better if it is part of the experience we would have a word for it already very interestingly, one of the analogous lines of reasoning is going on in the research because

some of the cultures have words for innovations that others don't so can you experience the feeling of the culture to send a word for it? what is something you have to leave out of the book quite a went to see an expert into genetic engineering because i thought it would be an interesting kind of precedent for the idea of altering the body. a lot of the kind of bioethical arguments i thought it thought it a visit resonance. there are not many other things that were left on the cutting room floor. question was that that imagery

feeling that you are literally there are ecstatic imagination? scenic when i saw at the air force base that they had a very limited set up it was basically you sat on a swivel chair and it vibrated and they didn't have the smell and the other things like that. i showed you some stills so basically right now there are six episodes they watch but they want to make it into this kind of band of brothers is so that he would watch over a longer period of time you would follow the same squad of soldiers survey didn't get the fully immersed experience just like you didn't get the full experience. yes, right?

>> preparing in virtual reality and after. >> are there changes in the chemical bacteria i don't know. i bet there are. it would make sense but unfortunately, i don't know about it. one of the cool things but they said to me is look, we have only existed in the world with electronic screening for a few decades. the brain hasn't had time to evolve to tell the difference between real life and virtual life. if it looks like a snake, you treat it like a snake. >> for the general population we haven't started giving out to folks for lack of a better word.

[inaudible] on the flipside it's kind of ironic that society is focused on visual and i'm curious -- >> one of the people we went to see if anybody familiar with his work? it was hard to render digitally. he says it is easier to convey to the said the others have been kind of left out but he's doing these projects like for example you wear a ring and then your romantic partner wears a ring and you press where the jewel

case would be and it sends them a little squeeze and the idea is he's worked on conveying smile smells through the phone and and offenders would imitate burst of coffee. if you wanted to have coffee or if it is a perfume or something like that. but each device has to have this additional thing on it. it's harder to do so he was making the point of these are harder to scale band sound and vision, which is exactly what you're saying. is there time left? think you so much. you've been a wonderful audience. thank you. "-close-quotes p. mac

[applause]

the author of the new book about the cowboy and ronald reagan's cabinet. who is matt? >> the important thing for this book is that he was the secretary of commerce for president ronald reagan until he died in office. prior to that he was an industrialist that ran a company about a billion dollar company which was real money in those days. >> what did the department look like when he